Google reveals winners of YouTube Space Lab competition

Finalists of the YouTube Space Lab competition get to experience a ZERO-G weightless flight. Image courtesy of YouTube

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams will be performing two science experiments that have won the YouTube Space Lab competition when she travels to the International Space Station later this year. The experiments will also be streamed live from the space station via YouTube, Google has just announced.

Williams revealed the winners in Washington, DC, where the six regional finalists converged.

The Google science competition challenged students to design a science experiment that could be performed in space.

Two teens from Troy in the US state of Michigan and one teen from Alexandria, Egypt, won out in the end.

Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma hail from a junior high school in Troy, Michigan. They won in the 14-16-year-old age group for their project ‘Could alien superbugs cure diseases on earth?’, while Amr Mohamed from Alexandria in Egypt was the global winner in the 17-18-year-old age group. His project is entitled ‘Can you teach an old spider new tricks?’

Williams will be performing the two winning experiments aboard the International Space Station and streaming them live to the world on YouTube.

While in Washington, all the teams also took a ZERO-G weightless flight and a private tour of the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum.

Google said today the three winners would also get to choose between two space adventures. They can head to Japan to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, alternatively, once they are all 18 years of age, they can head to Star City to participate in a week-long astronaut course at the training centre for Russian cosmonauts.